The Sun’s corona, its outermost atmosphere, is typically only visible to the naked eye during a total solar eclipse. The SwRI-led Citizen Continental-America Telescopic Eclipse (CATE) 2024 project evaluated special cameras to measure the polarization of coronal light during the April 2023 total solar eclipse in Exmouth, Western Australia. In this image, the colors indicate the polarization or orientation of the light. The white features, called prominences, have no polarization.

Citizen CATE 2024

We collected data and it will be made available soon!

On April 8th, 2024, a total solar eclipse (where the moon completely blocks out the Sun) crossed over the U.S., with the path of totality spanning from Texas, through the Midwest, and up through Maine. The Citizen CATE 2024 experiment, funded by the National Science Foundation and NASA, placed 35 identical telescope setups along the path of totality to be teamed by groups of community scientists. All teams were provided with a telescope, camera, laptop, various other observing equipment, and educational materials. This equipment is now in local communities across the path to be used for further astronomical and solar science outreach.

The images collected during the eclipse were polarized images, which allow scientists to better understand where and how light is coming from the Sun, and gain a better sense of the structure of the solar corona, the outermost layer of the Sun.

Now, the Citizen CATE 2024 project is analyzing the data collected on eclipse day in order to investigate fundamental questions about the Sun.